1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to the field of Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) reporting and, more particularly, to EDI reporting with hyperlinks to EDI source information.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic Data Interchange (EDI) provides for a computer-to-computer exchange of structured business information, by agreed message standards, from one computer application to another by electronic means with a minimum of human intervention. EDI is generally understood to mean specific interchange methods agreed upon by national or international standards bodies for the transfer of business transaction data, with one typical application being the automated purchase of goods and services. EDI standards include United Nations/Electronic Data Interchange For Administration, Commerce, and Transport (UN/EDIFACT), American National Standards Institute Accredited Standards Committee (ANSI ASC) X12, TRADACOMS by the Article Number Association (ANA), the Uniform Communication Standard (UCS), and the like.
EDI standards are independent of lower level technologies and should be distinguished from the transmission method used to convey EDI formatted information. Common transmission methods for EDI formatted data include bisynchronous modem transfers, email transfers, file transfer protocol (FTP) transfers, Telnet transfers, Hypertext Transport Protocol (HTTP) based transfers, and the like. All information contained in an EDI transaction set is, for the most part, the same information as that presented within a conventionally printed document.
To illustrate, FIG. 1 shows a purchase order document 110 and an equivalent EDI document 150. Both documents 110 and 150 include header 160 information, body 162 information, detail 164 information, and summary 166 information. The EDI document 150 is highly dependant upon a series of standardized codes, which can specify business transactions details in a clear, unambiguous manner to minimize miscommunications.
Any company can format business transaction in accordance with EDI standards and can be assured that the transaction is receivable by other companies having systems configured to accept and process EDI formatted data. An EDI format can be, and often is, used as a standardized and/or intermediate format that is utilized to communicate between dissimilar data systems of different companies. For example, Company A can transform information from its internal representation (either manually or through the aid of an automated conversion tool) to a known EDI format, which is conveyed to Company B, where it is converted into an internal format used by Company B. It should be noted that a number of commercially available message routing/transformation/integration tools, such as WEBSPHERE TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER by IBM Corporation of Armonk, N.Y., can facilitate the automated conversions from EDI to a company's internal format.
Despite the maturity and widespread use of EDI, no satisfactory standards exist for generating EDI transaction reports. The EDI standard itself supports acknowledgements, which are EDI transactions that describe the original EDI and any errors contained in transmitted EDI data. The traditional use of EDI acknowledgements has been to debug data. Information in conventionally implemented acknowledgements is very limited and debugging bad EDI data solely using acknowledgments is very difficult and requires strong EDI expertise.
A number of enhanced reporting EDI tools have been provided by various venders. One such report, which is part of the TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER HIPAA Pack, is often referred to as “Translated Acks.” Each Translated Acks report is created from a map in the TRANSFORMATION EXTENDER Compliance Check module and is written using JAVASCRIPT and Hypertext Markup Language (HTML). The report has a coding structure that mimics the structure of the EDI data. The error discovery and correction process would be expedited if the EDI report were to be linked to the EDI source, which is not currently the case with conventional EDI reporting solutions.